Deepwater Horizon Manager Refuses to Testify in Spill Lawsuits

June 21 (Bloomberg) -- Jimmy Wayne Harrell, Transocean
Ltd.’s highest-ranking drilling employee on the Deepwater
Horizon rig before it exploded and sank, refused to testify in
civil lawsuits over the accident, according to court records.

Harrell, the rig’s offshore installation manager, was in
charge of drilling activities on the Deepwater Horizon, which
exploded April 20, 2010, while drilling a BP Plc well off the
Louisiana coast. Harrell, the point man between BP and the
drilling crew, told federal investigators at public hearings in
New Orleans last year that he was in command of the rig before
the explosion, which killed 11 workers and caused the worst
offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

“The parties have been advised that Harrell will invoke
his Fifth Amendment privilege” against self-incrimination, U.S.
Magistrate Judge Sally Shushan said yesterday in a status report
filed in federal court in New Orleans.

The Macondo well blowout and subsequent spill led to
hundreds of lawsuits against BP and its partners and
contractors. Shushan is handling the scheduling of depositions
for lawsuits combined in the court. A Halliburton Co. engineer
last month also declined to testify, according to court filings.

Douglas Brown, Transocean’s chief mechanic for the
Deepwater Horizon, told a joint investigative panel in May 2010
that he overheard Harrell and BP’s top employee on the rig
disagreeing on how to complete the well 11 hours before it blew
out.

‘Pinchers’

Brown said he heard Harrell reluctantly agree to proceed as
BP wanted. “Guess that’s what we have those pinchers for,”
Harrell said as he left a meeting with BP’s company man,
according to Brown’s testimony to the U.S. Coast Guard’s joint
marine panel on May 26, 2010.

Brown said he took Harrell’s comment as a reference to huge
shear rams on the rig’s blowout prevention equipment, which are
designed to clamp shut and cut off the flow of oil and gas
through the drill pipe in an emergency. The blowout preventer’s
rams failed to stop the rush of oil and gas when the well blew
out, causing the explosion and subsequent spill.

Harrell, during his own testimony before the Coast Guard
panel on May 27, 2010, denied having a “heated debate” with
the BP manager the day of the blast. He said he might have
complained a day earlier about the foam cement formulation being
used to complete the well.